The impact of contextual family risks on prisoners' children's behavioural outcomes and the potential protective role of family functioning moderators.

Research suggests that children of prisoners have an increased risk for behavioural and emotional problems. However, in a resilience approach, one should expect heterogeneous outcomes and thus apply a contextualized perspective. As this is rarely acknowledged in empirical research, the present study sought to fill this gap using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study on 801 children of imprisoned fathers. We explored the extent to which cumulative family risks measured during the first year of life (e.g., poverty and mental health problems) predicted behavioural outcomes at age 9 and whether potentially protective aspects of family functioning moderated the impact of these risk factors. Cumulative risk significantly predicted behavioural outcomes, but the associations were weak. No strong evidence of moderation was found. At low risk, mother-child closeness moderated behavioural outcomes. There was also some evidence of moderation by accumulated protective factors. Potential implications for policy and practice and challenges for further research are discussed.The authors would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for providing funding for this research, the organisers of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study Summer Data Workshop 2013 for their introduction to the dataset and Steve Lainé for his technical support.This is the final version. It first appeared from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2015.105037

Growth Influence of Some Additives on the Mycelial Growth and Fruit Body Development of Pleurotus Ostreatus (Jacq. Et. Fr.) Kummer

Studies were conducted to establish the response of a wood – rotting fungus, Pleurotus ostreatus to different growth substrates (sawdust (SD), dry banana leaves (BL) and a combination of both) and additives [groundnut cake (GC) and palm kernel cake (PKC)]. Spawning (Mycelia running rate) and fruit body development (area of pileus, length of stipe and fresh weight) were assessed. Initiation of mycelial growth took place in both treated and untreated substrate samples within 7 days post inoculation (dpi). Spawn run was delayed in SD substrates treated to PKC beyond 2% and in BL substrates treated with 4% PKC and above. In BL+SD, spawn run was delayed at all levels of PKC treatments. Spawn run in the BL, BL+SD and SD controls were completed in 21, 28 and 35 days respectively, following inoculation. Primordia production occurred in all the samples within 7 days of transfer of bags to the cropping room. Treatment of substrates with additives (GC and PKC) negatively affected the performance of the substrates. Addition of 4% of the additives on BL and BL+SD substrates produced mushrooms with smaller pileus size with the smallest (13.08cm2) observed on 4% PKC-treated BL substrates. Similar trends were observed in length of stipe, fresh weight and biological efficiency of the mushroom. All substrates evaluated supported production of fruit bodies for 70 days making a total of 14 flushes from the inception of cropping. Key words: Additives, Mycelial growth, fruit body production, Pleurotus ostreatus

In-Vitro Effect of some Commonly Found Botanicals on the Growth and Sporulation of Choanephora Cucurbitarum (Berkeley and Ravenel)

A soft rot infection of Abelmoschus esculentus, Amaranthus hybridus and Vigna unguiculata was observed in home gardens and Government farms in the 2010 cropping season. This disease caused remarkable yield loss in these crops. Due to residual effects of synthetic chemical control, it became necessary to test the potency of some botanicals on the growth and  sporulation of the fungus as a control measure.  The  procedures involved isolation and identification of the fungus and potency trials of aqueous and ethanolic extracts of the  botanicals on the assay fungus. The isolated fungus was confirmed  as Choanephora cucurbitarum. The extracts were obtained from Zingiber officinale Roscoe, Gmelina arborea Roxb, Chromolaena odorata Linnaeus and Azadirachta indica A. Juss. Different concentrations of the extracts (0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50%) were used. With ethanol extract, there was complete inhibition of growth by all plant extracts and at all concentrations;  and a little growth in aqueous extracts with Azadirachta indica showing the highest inhibitory effect, while C. odorata showed the lowest inhibitory effect on the first day, (A. indica, 0.1 ± 0.0 ≥ G. arborea, 0.1 ± 0.0 ˃ Z. officinale, 0.2 ± 0.0 ˃ C. odorata, 0.3 ± 0.0). On the last day, the level of inhibition was as follows A. indica, 0.4 ± 0.0 ˃ G. arborea, 0.6 ± 0.0 ˃ Z. officinale, 0.7 ± 0.0 ≥ C. odorata 0.7 ± 0.0. The inhibitory effect increased with increase in the percentage concentration of the extracts. The  potency  was also due in part to the phytochemical constituents of the plant extracts which was observed from the screening test that Saponins, Tannins, Alkaloids, Cardiac glycosides, Flavonoids, Reducing Compounds, Polyphenol, Phlobatannins, Anthraquinones and Hydroxymethyl anthraquinones were either present or absent. Ke words: Botanicals, Cross-River, Phytochemicals, Extract, Susceptibility.

Global scale comparison of simultaneous ionospheric potential measurements

Abstract Ž . A unique series of simultaneous ionospheric potential V balloon soundings were obtained I every 3 h over 2 full days at Weston, MA and Darwin, Australia, on the other side of the earth. These comparisons were to test the assumption that the ionosphere at sub-auroral latitudes is an equipotential and that a single measurement can provide a globally representative number. Another objective was to evaluate meteorological conditions affecting the measurements in a clean Ž . dry continental atmosphere Darwin compared with a more variable moist less clean atmosphere Ž . Weston . The results indicate that for the Darwin data the V measurements were within 10% of I the classic Carnegie curve diurnal variation while the Weston data were more variable and often too large. The major source of error appears to be due to hydrated aerosol at Weston causing high electric fields in the exchange layer that were not fully compensated by electric fields above the inversion. The prototype instrumentation also contributed some error. The major finding of this experiment is that a layer of low conductivity air near the ground can have an unexpectedly large effect on electric field sounding data leading to error in the estimates of V magnitude. This I finding would not have been possible if simultaneous measurements in different airmasses had not been made since the individual electric field profiles appeared normal. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

The global atmospheric electrical circuit and climate

Evidence is emerging for physical links among clouds, global temperatures, the global atmospheric electrical circuit and cosmic ray ionisation. The global circuit extends throughout the atmosphere from the planetary surface to the lower layers of the ionosphere. Cosmic rays are the principal source of atmospheric ions away from the continental boundary layer: the ions formed permit a vertical conduction current to flow in the fair weather part of the global circuit. Through the (inverse) solar modulation of cosmic rays, the resulting columnar ionisation changes may allow the global circuit to convey a solar influence to meteorological phenomena of the lower atmosphere. Electrical effects on non-thunderstorm clouds have been proposed to occur via the ion-assisted formation of ultra-fine aerosol, which can grow to sizes able to act as cloud condensation nuclei, or through the increased ice nucleation capability of charged aerosols. Even small atmospheric electrical modulations on the aerosol size distribution can affect cloud properties and modify the radiative balance of the atmosphere, through changes communicated globally by the atmospheric electrical circuit. Despite a long history of work in related areas of geophysics, the direct and inverse relationships between the global circuit and global climate remain largely quantitatively unexplored. From reviewing atmospheric electrical measurements made over two centuries and possible paleoclimate proxies, global atmospheric electrical circuit variability should be expected on many timescale

Assessment of the capacity to consent to treatment in patients admitted to acute medical wards

BACKGROUND: Assessment of capacity to consent to treatment is an important legal and ethical issue in daily medical practice. In this study we carefully evaluated the capacity to consent to treatment in patients admitted to an acute medical ward using an assessment by members of the medical team, the specific Silberfeld's score, the MMSE and an assessment by a senior psychiatrist. METHODS: Over a 3 month period, 195 consecutive patients of an internal medicine ward in a university hospital were included and their capacity to consent was evaluated within 72 hours of admission. RESULTS: Among the 195 patients, 38 were incapable of consenting to treatment (unconscious patients or severe cognitive impairment) and 14 were considered as incapable of consenting by the psychiatrist (prevalence of incapacity to consent of 26.7%). Agreement between the psychiatrist's evaluation and the Silberfeld questionnaire was poor (sensitivity 35.7%, specificity 91.6%). Experienced clinicians showed a higher agreement (sensitivity 57.1%, specificity 96.5%). A decision shared by residents, chief residents and nurses was the best predictor for agreement with the psychiatric assessment (sensitivity 78.6%, specificity 94.3%). CONCLUSION: Prevalence of incapacity to consent to treatment in patients admitted to an acute internal medicine ward is high. While the standardized Silberfeld questionnaire and the MMSE are not appropriate for the evaluation of the capacity to consent in this setting, an assessment by the multidisciplinary medical team concurs with the evaluation by a senior psychiatrist

Learning and Long-Term Retention of Large-Scale Artificial Languages

Recovering discrete words from continuous speech is one of the first challenges facing language learners. Infants and adults can make use of the statistical structure of utterances to learn the forms of words from unsegmented input, suggesting that this ability may be useful for bootstrapping language-specific cues to segmentation. It is unknown, however, whether performance shown in small-scale laboratory demonstrations of “statistical learning” can scale up to allow learning of the lexicons of natural languages, which are orders of magnitude larger. Artificial language experiments with adults can be used to test whether the mechanisms of statistical learning are in principle scalable to larger lexicons. We report data from a large-scale learning experiment that demonstrates that adults can learn words from unsegmented input in much larger languages than previously documented and that they retain the words they learn for years. These results suggest that statistical word segmentation could be scalable to the challenges of lexical acquisition in natural language learning.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF DDRIG #0746251